As with project planning, much has been written on this subject, so, I will limit my discussion to Execution Management in the new Project Management Best Practices paradigm.
Remember that discussion about process versus projects we introduced under planning? Here is where we will examine that in greater detail, and propose a methodology to eliminate this problem.
Suppose you are the department head of a manufacturing operation, and you’re about to give one of your staff and new assignment, only to discover they are busy with Project X., which you know nothing about. What do you think your next step might be? Darn right! Call in the project manager for Project X. and explain who’s in charge, etc. etc.
So, next time around this project manager comes to you asking for staff assignments where he will need some help, but the work won’t start until eight months from now. Who will you assign? I sure wouldn’t want to make that decision today. Staff assignments, workload, vacations, promotions, etc. clearly, that decision should be made much closer to the time the work will actually be performed. Ironically, the need to have a name is often driven by the limitations of the software planning tool. Computers like certainty, but the ideal workflow would involve assigning the department today, and the individual resource at some point in the future. As long as we’re dreaming, let’s let the department head (not the planner, or the project manager) assign the resource.
Okay so we plan the work assignment to a department, and let the department head assign the resource. Simple, right? Not really! I was on a project once where we planned a large block of work for two separate divisions. One division was ahead, so the trailing division copied their plans with appropriate staff reassignments. Wow! It was ugly! The organizations were virtually identical, but not exactly identical, and this process resulted in blocks of work assigned to the wrong department! Gee, what if we simply asked you “is this your teams work?” And let you accept the work now but make a resource assignment later? This way, we know we have the work assigned to the right team. As long as we’re dreaming, how about giving you a way to give the work back to the planner, while we’re planning, perhaps with a note advising what team owns this activity. This way, we catch the error, and correct, while minimizing rework within the planning process. I have implemented tools that do this, and I can assure you the insurmountable planning of large projects suddenly becomes straightforward, efficient, and brutally effective.
Let’s review: For the large company where project work is not your primary business, plan the work as a project, but execute the work inside of your individual teams, or departments, within the larger organization. Unless a dedicated team of staff will work exclusively on this project, this approach is absolutely essential. Look what we’ve accomplished: planning using a cross functional team, and execution inside the silos of the existing organizational structure, with the individual resources and their direct supervisor responsible for the execution of each discrete process step.
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